Whitebark Stream It's deciding where to die and deciding where to fight

Grezig heard the call from inside a dream. She’d been sleeping a lot lately, both because the pregnancy was making her tired and to conserve energy for the birth and the caring of the pups. Whitebark had been good to her; she hadn’t starved since her arrival. Still, this pregnancy would have been easier had Kavik stuck around for the whole thing. When the call came, she thought she saw him at the far end of a long tunnel, as if he wanted her to walk it and reach him. As she padded closer and closer to him, she also awoke, until she was blinking daylight out of her eyes, coming in from the entrance to her den.

And the howl was still going. It hadn’t been a dream. He was really here. Delight suffused her body, followed immediately by anger, feelings of betrayal, wanting to kill something. Him, maybe. Or maybe she’d just tear off an ear and feed it to him, make him choke on his own blood. He had left her—and more importantly—his children. The children they had made together. And now, here he was, having crawled back to beg her forgiveness.

She stood on unsteady, tired legs. She really shouldn’t be outside the den for long at this point. She only had a week or so left before she gave birth (or so she thought). If she hurt herself getting to him now, she’d hang it over his head for the rest of his miserable life. She waddled out of the den, walking slowly over to where she’d heard his call. It would take a while to reach him, and she thought he could use that time to wallow in his probable misery…

Eventually, she saw his form through the trees and stopped. There she stood, some distance from him still, staring him down with dark, angry eyes. She said nothing, but a menacing growl began in her throat, her chest. Her ears pulled back along her skull, her tail lifted over her back in a show of dominance, and she bared her fangs at him and snarled: the perfect picture of a wolf about to tear someone’s face off. She inhaled sharply, and after a moment, snapped, “Well?”